Premarital sexual activity among adolescent women has accelerated during the last two decades--with a sharp jump since 1985--despite an increase in sex education and AIDS prevention programs, federal health officials reported Friday. By 1988, 51.5% of women ages 15 to 19 said they had engaged in premarital sex by their late teens--nearly double the 28.6% reported in 1970, according to a new survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control.

SINCE the dawn of its days as a medical specialty, plastic surgery has been marching inexorably down women's bodies, straightening, slimming, tucking as it goes, restoring the appearance of youth to features sagging with age and smoothing those marked by eccentricity. Plastic surgery's southward expansion has now entered territory long thought sacred.

A bill to make it illegal for an adult female to engage in sexual relations with a male minor has been passed by the Senate and sent to Gov. Pete Wilson. The legislation was sparked by the 1992 case of a Granada Hills woman who was put on probation after being convicted of having sex with 10 teen-age boys after giving them alcohol and showing pornographic movies. The woman was charged only with oral copulation and lewd conduct because California statutory rape law applies only to female victims.

October 2, 2005 | Anne-Marie O'Connor, Times staff writer Anne-Marie O'Connor last wrote for the magazine about hit men of the Tijuana drug cartel.

Dr. Jennifer Berman was the golden newcomer to the burgeoning world of women's sexual health when, in 2001, UCLA lured her from Boston University with a prestigious fellowship and groomed her to open its Female Sexual Medicine Center. Her promise of an innovative approach to an array of disorders grouped under the newly minted term "female sexual dysfunction" had rocketed her to the forefront of the hunt for a drug to enhance female sexual pleasure.

Much is being been made of the case of Sabino Gutierrez. He is believed to be the first man to win a verdict in a sexual harassment suit against a woman. But the case is less about unwanted attention from the opposite sex and more about abuse of authority in the workplace. A workplace should be an environment where employees, male or female, are free of sexual innuendoes, overtures and harassment.

SINCE the dawn of its days as a medical specialty, plastic surgery has been marching inexorably down women's bodies, straightening, slimming, tucking as it goes, restoring the appearance of youth to features sagging with age and smoothing those marked by eccentricity. Plastic surgery's southward expansion has now entered territory long thought sacred.

Early last year, the Des Moines Register published a gripping five-part series--the detailed account of one woman's rape and its aftermath. Although the Register would subsequently win a Pulitzer Prize for "meritorious public service" for the series, Register Editor Geneva Overholser encountered resistance from several male editors on her staff before its publication. The series "made more men editors on the staff uncomfortable," Overholser says.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony issued an extraordinary public apology Tuesday for the failings of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles and of himself. Divorced and remarried Catholics, organized labor, victims of sexual abuse by the clergy, women and homosexuals were among the specific groups Mahony listed as he declared that confession and repentance must precede forgiveness.

One of the first publicity hiccups for Mike Binder's HBO series "The Mind of the Married Man" occurred last summer, in a ballroom at the Pasadena Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The nation's television critics and reporters were on hand for the semiannual unveiling of new TV shows on the cable and broadcast networks. HBO had put together a moving hour on "Band of Brothers," the pay channel's 10-part World War II epic based on the book by Stephen Ambrose.

October 24, 1999 | MORDECAI RICHLER, Mordecai Richler is the author of numerous books, including "Solomon Gursky Was Here," "Barney's Version" and "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz."

As we shuffle into the new millennium, it's not Y2K that worries me: Instead, it's recognition that the sexually inhibited but haimish world I grew up in is crumbling all around me. Standards aren't what they used to be. I can't, for instance, imagine the rebbe in our Galicianer shul having written a how-to-do-it book titled "Kosher Sex," as a rabbi in Oxford did recently.

One of the first publicity hiccups for Mike Binder's HBO series "The Mind of the Married Man" occurred last summer, in a ballroom at the Pasadena Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The nation's television critics and reporters were on hand for the semiannual unveiling of new TV shows on the cable and broadcast networks. HBO had put together a moving hour on "Band of Brothers," the pay channel's 10-part World War II epic based on the book by Stephen Ambrose.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony issued an extraordinary public apology Tuesday for the failings of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles and of himself. Divorced and remarried Catholics, organized labor, victims of sexual abuse by the clergy, women and homosexuals were among the specific groups Mahony listed as he declared that confession and repentance must precede forgiveness.

October 24, 1999 | MORDECAI RICHLER, Mordecai Richler is the author of numerous books, including "Solomon Gursky Was Here," "Barney's Version" and "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz."

As we shuffle into the new millennium, it's not Y2K that worries me: Instead, it's recognition that the sexually inhibited but haimish world I grew up in is crumbling all around me. Standards aren't what they used to be. I can't, for instance, imagine the rebbe in our Galicianer shul having written a how-to-do-it book titled "Kosher Sex," as a rabbi in Oxford did recently.

August 27, 1995 | Karrie Jacobs, Karrie Jacobs lives in New York , where she is writer-at-large for the architecture and design magazine Metropolis

"What's this about?" a friend asks as he plucks from my desk a copy of Aaron Betsky's "Building Sex: Men, Women, Architecture and the Construction of Sexuality." My friend, you understand, has no interest in architecture and his idea of critical discourse is the Penthouse Forum, so I can only assume that he's drawn to this book because the word sex is emblazoned on the cover in red letters three inches tall while the word building all but disappears. "I think it says that the Empire State Building is a boy," I joke, "and that the Hollywood Bowl is a girl."

Although divorce and adultery may seem odd subjects for a post-Valentine's Day rental, stick with "The Women" for a range of views on love, most of them quite sensible, and a surprisingly happy ending, with a few tears and plenty of laughs along the way. The 1939 film has fun using the relationships between women (there are no men in the cast) to explore the relationships between men and women.

A bill to make it illegal for an adult female to engage in sexual relations with a male minor has been passed by the Senate and sent to Gov. Pete Wilson. The legislation was sparked by the 1992 case of a Granada Hills woman who was put on probation after being convicted of having sex with 10 teen-age boys after giving them alcohol and showing pornographic movies. The woman was charged only with oral copulation and lewd conduct because California statutory rape law applies only to female victims.

Although divorce and adultery may seem odd subjects for a post-Valentine's Day rental, stick with "The Women" for a range of views on love, most of them quite sensible, and a surprisingly happy ending, with a few tears and plenty of laughs along the way. The 1939 film has fun using the relationships between women (there are no men in the cast) to explore the relationships between men and women.

October 2, 2005 | Anne-Marie O'Connor, Times staff writer Anne-Marie O'Connor last wrote for the magazine about hit men of the Tijuana drug cartel.

Dr. Jennifer Berman was the golden newcomer to the burgeoning world of women's sexual health when, in 2001, UCLA lured her from Boston University with a prestigious fellowship and groomed her to open its Female Sexual Medicine Center. Her promise of an innovative approach to an array of disorders grouped under the newly minted term "female sexual dysfunction" had rocketed her to the forefront of the hunt for a drug to enhance female sexual pleasure.

Much is being been made of the case of Sabino Gutierrez. He is believed to be the first man to win a verdict in a sexual harassment suit against a woman. But the case is less about unwanted attention from the opposite sex and more about abuse of authority in the workplace. A workplace should be an environment where employees, male or female, are free of sexual innuendoes, overtures and harassment.

Early last year, the Des Moines Register published a gripping five-part series--the detailed account of one woman's rape and its aftermath. Although the Register would subsequently win a Pulitzer Prize for "meritorious public service" for the series, Register Editor Geneva Overholser encountered resistance from several male editors on her staff before its publication. The series "made more men editors on the staff uncomfortable," Overholser says.